Today, telephone voice channel has become an easy channel to book certain services and also to do an inquiry and get information on various services. Services like Radio-Cabs, Travel Portals, Movie-show bookings, Local Search Engine etc are becoming popular and users prefer to be serviced through a telephone call. Any popular service (say Taxi/Cab) usually has multiple service providers. Though these multiple service providers provide the same type of service to the end user, the end user has to call a different service number to make use of the service of that particular service provider. This essentially means even if the end user does not have a preferred service provider, they have to choose a particular service provider to gain service. In essence the user experience can not be guaranteed. For example if there are two service providers say SP A and SP B; at a given time say SP A is able to provide the required service while SP B is not; say user has no preference to SP A or SP B; user calls up SP B and wants to avail of a service which SP B can not provide; so the user calls SP A and tries to avail of the service. The user experience is bad because of wasted telephone calls (calls SP B and then SP A) and time (time taken to find SP B is not available and then time taken to actually ask for services of SPA). The present invention enables the richer user experience in terms of both time and naturalness.
Typically, when a user calls these services over the telephone, the call is answered by a live agent or by an automated IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system. Invariably, in either situation, the caller is put on hold; especially if the ratio of the agents to the simultaneous calls is high; and in many cases suggesting the approximate time the user has to wait for the users call to be serviced in between hold music. After a certain hold time, the caller is able to interact with the service provider (can talk to the agent/IVR) and is able to make the service request. In many cases the caller (user) request may not be served in a single call to a service operator; for reasons like operator could not provide with the requested service or the caller wants to get information from another similar but different service operators and then make a decision. The caller has to the dial the next service operator where he may be put to hold again and the cycle repeats. For example; Radio-Cabs have become popular in many countries and usually have multiple operators in a particular region. Though there are other modes, the most popular mode to book a cab still remains the voice mode where the user dial's a predefined service provider number and talk's to a human agent to make the transaction (booking). When the user dials the cab service, he is put to hold by the IVR system and has to wait till an agent is available to service the call. The soft music and advertisements played to the caller during the wait are in most cases irrelevant to the user and in most cases frustrating to the caller. When the caller's turn comes, he can talk to the agent and make a cab reservation subject to of course the actual availability of the cab. In an optimistic scenario the user gets to reserve the taxi, but in a pessimistic scenario (the service provider can not provide the service) the user has to dial another cab operator and go through the same sequence, wait until the user can connect to an agent before the user requirement can be fulfilled. In such a scenario, using the telephone channel there is no way the user can connect to the taxi operator which can answer him fastest or first. Unlike a web portal or a web mashup, there is no way for the user to check the offerings from different service operators and choose the best among them using the telephone channel.
As seen in the example scenario the user experience is poor and the user in a worst case scenario may be left with no information even though there are several operators for the service. Thus, the telephone service channel faces following shortcomings:                Long hold times and no effective use of the hold time. Usually some music or repetitive advertisements are played which are extraneous to the caller.        Inability to connect to the least wait time service operator.        Sequential connection, one after the other, to service operators or the sources of information. There is no way to get information from various service operators in the same call.        The user has to speak the same information every time he talks to the new service operators; the user speaking the same information several times is redundant.        
Several inventions have been made in this domain some of them known to us are described below:
US Patent application 20100104075 describes a method, apparatus and system for enhancing a processing priority, Implementing Interactive Service and for Generating Customized IVR Flow. US'075 application claims to change processing priority and customize IVR call flow based on the subscriber information. However, the proposed system doesn't disclose about changing of the service IVR call flow.
US Patent application 20100158218 describes a method for interactive service through a system of Voice Applications setup over a new Distributed architecture consisting of Internet, VOIP, Telephones, Cellular Phones and dedicated local devices. US'218 patent application also teaches on utilization of voice applications that are performed by voice applications agent's resident on user local devices to deliver messages to the users. However, the proposed system is hosted intermediate IVR service which eases and enhances caller experience through an IVR Mashup service over the existing telephone architecture, in the common Single Service Multiple Service-Operator scenario. Although US'218 discloses a service to connect user to purchase goods and services, it does not address the solution for an IVR Mashup service. The proposed invention provides an IVR Mashup service over the existing architecture of tele-communication system.
US Patent Application 20090207996 and the prior art approaches in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,627,884, 6,563,921, 6,754,334, 5,436,967, 5,185,782 and 5,155,761 present system and methods to eliminate hold time. However, in these systems the user has to make a request to the called party system or a third party system through a phone call or a data device and then in return to the request the called party or the third party system calls back the user when the called party live agent is available. These systems rely on the callbacks for access to the required information. Also they do not provide method to enable service provider selection nor do they provide an IVR mashup over the telephone system as proposed by the invention.
Though speaking over a telephone is a preferable mode to order services over other modes like website and messaging, it is comparatively less efficient in the current form and fails to address the poor user experience.
Therefore, there is a long-felt need for a system that addresses the shortcomings mentioned above that enables a mashup like interface over the communication device thus providing both ease to the access of services and information and enhancing caller experience. The present invention primarily proposes a system and method for enabling a mashup of IVRs of different service providers providing the same service using existing service flow without implementing a new distributed architecture.
Other features and advantages of the present invention will be explained in the following description of the invention having reference to the appended drawings.